Russell Hasan's Blog

I recently read an article in the KDP Amazon.com newsletter about how indie writers should blog about their works in progress, so I am blogging about the two books I am writing right now. It's been about a year since I published "Rob Seablue and the Eye of Tantalus," and it has not been a commercial success, and it was recently rejected by the Libertarian Futurist Society in their nomination for finalists for their awards. I am taking this as an indication that my fiction writing needs technical improvement, so I am now trying my hand at writing nonfiction books. Unlike my fiction, many of my nonfiction articles in Liberty Magazine have been quite popular, so apparently my nonfiction is better than my fiction. I am writing two nonfiction books right now. The first nonfiction book is a combination of a policy paper outlining the libertarian positions on various issues, combined with a new theoretical justification of libertarianism which draws upon politics, economics an...

I recently had a vigorous, healthy (i.e. mean and nasty) debate in a Libertarian discussion group on social media. I argued that rich children have an unfair advantage over poor children because poor children are trapped in failing public schools, and rich children can attend good private schools. The two people I was debating (one of whom was nice but foolish, the other absolutely vicious) could not think past the mistaken idea that I was saying it is unfair because the rich have more money and can afford to send their children to private schools, and poor people can't, which is NOT my argument. My argument was the libertarian argument that the government uses VIOLENT FORCE to compel poor children to attend the failing public schools, because of our rotten socialized k-12 public education system and compulsory attendance. Because the government uses this force against poor children, but not rich children, it is UNFAIR for the poor children, and the law is treating rich children di...

This mini-essay was expanded upon in my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please take a look at my book. The Philosophy of Science. Many famous philosophers have sought to take the approach and methods of science and translate science into philosophy to create a truly scientific philosophy. These thinkers include Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Quine. I argue that each failed, for the reasons below: Hume seemed to think that because scientific theories are always capable of being disproved by new empirical evidence, that skepticism was the scientific attitude. He ignored the fact that science, when theories have been proven and experimentally verified, seeks to provide us some degree of knowledge. We can know that the sun will come up tomorrow, because of the scientific postulates of astronomy, which science has empirically verified. Whereas Hume claimed we cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hume’s rejection of faith was rational, but his rejection of...

The Veil of Ignorance by Russell Hasan             DECIDE, God said to us. CHOOSE YOUR STYLE OF CIVILIZATION. I WILL RESHAPE THE WORLD BASED UPON YOUR CHOICE. KNOW THAT EACH OF YOU WILL BE BORN INTO ONE OF THESE SEVEN LIVES; WHICH ONE, I WILL NOT SAY…             We seven souls stared down into a vast chasm of star-scarred space-time, looking far off into the distance at a small blue-green planet orbiting a raging fireball; we were standing in a circle, our feet sunk ankle-deep into the mists of eternity. Highlighted for us to see with special clarity were seven of the fetuses taking shape within wombs of females of the ape-like dominant species on this planet, the seven bodies that we souls were going to be placed into by God: one, the daughter of a drunken wife-beating mechanic; another the son of a Senator and a wealthy heiress; yet another a son gestating with...

The Philosopher’s Stone by Russell Hasan             “Here I was, sleeping in a comfortable mattress I made using my Philosopher’s Stone, sleeping off a hangover from a delicious beef stew and two exquisite bottles of Pinot Noir I conjured up, and then you come and rudely toss me from bed and point a sword of fire at my throat. Good gods, man, have you no decency?”             “Be silent, heretic! People died to make your accursed Philosopher’s Stone. Now tell me where you’ve hidden the Stone, infidel!”             “That’s just a myth, you know. We don’t make the Stones from human blood. We distill them from dragon scales and fairy nectar. No one is harmed by the fun that we have. Not that I would expect a Councilman like you to know what fun is, Count D’Imir.”        ...

The below post was incorporated into my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please consider buying my book. Okay, this blog is not supposed to be focused upon the philosophical question of the mind-brain identity. Next month I am going to start posting on entirely different topics. But permit me one last mind-brain blog post. . . . How do we know that the mind is the brain? Three reasons: 1. Brain damage. Science has learned, from over 100 years of experience, that brain damage to a specific section of the brain corresponds to a failure in a specific function of the mind. For example, there is a part of the brain which once damaged causes the mind to cease to recognize faces, so a person can see the face of a loved one and not know who they are, and be unable to remember faces. This strongly suggests that the mind is composed of the collection of mental functions of each part of the human brain. 2. Drug effects. Drugs such as alcohol and marijuana have a spec...

This blog post has found a new home in my book The Apple of Knowledge. If you enjoy it, please buy my book! There is a popular Philosophy 101/Philosophy of Mind argument that looks at the data from brains which have had the corpus collosum, which connects the brain's right and left hemispheres together, severed. Severing the corpus collosum was an old remedy for seizures which is no longer used, but the data remains. These brains had minds where one part of the mind did not know what another part of the mind was seeing. For example, the left eye would look at an apple but the mouth would say "I don't see an apple." The Analytic philosophers' argument is that a "person" or a "mind" is one whole being, and therefore the self cannot be identical with the brain. I draw precisely the opposite conclusion: it is scientifically undeniable that the mind is the brain, and therefore cognitive neuroscience must conclude that the mind/brain has many diff...